Good Samaritan Society Canistota

To go along with a strong overall grade, we gave this place a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this category most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home fared well in the area of long-term care. Indeed, we awarded it a grade of A- for that area, which is one of our most favorable scores. In a long-term care environment, the facility's primary goal is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. After assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 79.77528 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which happens to be a bit less than we expected but still a respectable figure. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we like to see, we were pleased to find facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning to the third area, this facility also received a grade of B for its short-term care rating. This is an above average score in this category. Our short-term care scores are arguably more meaningful for people in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes more skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not only nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. It does not appear that this facility submitted data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Finally, we considered the number of residents who were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Switching gears to our last area, this nursing home was given a decent nursing grade. Even though this was not quite as good as several of its other grades, this is really not a major area of concern. Our nursing score assesses the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of training of the nurses as well as the number of hours spent with patients. This place provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This is a relatively low total compared to most other nursing homes. Finally, our nursing ratings also consider quality-based measures, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this facility actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is typically a good indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses to assist its patients.